Group items tagged

"TWELVE fifth-year medical students have admitted to taking screen grabs of questions in a University of Adelaide exam."

Some students took pictures of exam papers and left them for others to see.

Watches being banned from exams!

Some Danish high schools have experimented with allowing students access to the internet during exams.  This is a news article but it suggests thayt the trial showed many positive effects.

"Respondus is a powerful tool for creating and managing exams that can be printed to paper or published directly to Blackboard, ANGEL, Desire2Learn, eCollege, Moodle, and other eLearning systems. Exams can be created offline using a familiar Windows environment, or moved from one eLearning system to another. Whether you are a veteran of online testing or relatively new to it, Respondus will save you hours on each project. "

"(NZ) pupils may soon be able to sit school assessments online when they are ready, rather than waiting for the traditional exam period."

"Eighth-graders who thought a passage about a pineapple and a hare on New York state tests this week made no sense, take heart: The author thinks it's absurd too."

Why we should allow the Internet of Things in exams.

Sugata Mitra (TED talks and hole-in-the-wall computer innovator) critiques traditonal 'pencil and paper' exams and learning and gives an alternative which is (I think) a problem-based learning approach which he calls SOLE (Self-organised learning environment). 

"New psychological research suggests that university students who download a podcast lecture achieve substantially higher exam results than those who attend the lecture in person." Would have been nice to cite this morning ;-)

A group looking to extend education beyond testing and into life skills. "A gulf has opened up between what education systems provide and what children and young people need. Our schools and colleges rightly try to to ensure that young people are literate, numerate and gain academic qualifications. But the emphasis on testing and passing exams often squeezes out other skills that are just as vital in today's world. The leading non-political and non-profit-making organisations that have come together to form Whole Education are determined to change this. They want all young people to receive a well-rounded education that they can relate to. They want all to learn practical skills such as communication and teamwork, to develop qualities such as resilience and empathy and to acquire knowledge that goes beyond literacy and numeracy to an understanding of our culture. A Whole Education will combine practical skills with theory, vocational and academic study for all young people whatever their ability."

"Do you pass back exams, a set of papers or grades on some other student project and offer generic comments on what the class did and didn't do well on the assignment?"

New way of getting a specialist Master's degree from MIT - do online courses open to anyone, then a proctered exam and a one-semester residential.